Newbie Commanders & the NS2 experience
Omega_K2
Join Date: 2011-12-25 Member: 139013Members, Reinforced - Shadow
Join Date: 2011-12-25 Member: 139013Members, Reinforced - Shadow
<div class="IPBDescription">Suggestions, ideas, etc.</div>This is something that came up when discussing Anti-Grief measurements (see <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=116586" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/in...howtopic=116586</a> )
Is it acceptable to have a newbie com runing the game for the entire team and eventually the opposing one as well? But if we don't allow newbies to learn, we'll never have enough commanders and deny them the commanding experience. So what is the right choice of action?
I think this is a really though problem. Firstly, that newbie might be at least willing to learn, so he actually does decently enough, so if you don't let him, we would loose a potential decent commander in the future. But then we also have the other kind of newbies, that is stubborn and doesn't want to listen or simply can't (because they might not speak English at all) which can lead to a terrible game
There is also the problem of different learning paces, some people may pick things up very quickly, some other may be rather slow.
A less restrictive option is to have the com voting system in place and simply display how long the specific player has been commanding for. A commander with 10 hours experience as marine is more lilkly to be successful compared to a com with just 2 hours com experience. Nobody would be forced to vote for the more experienced com, if people are willing to give the newer com a chance, they sill can.
Also quantity doesn't mean quality, so recording win/loss might be a good idea (in theory), but that is biased against current build imbalances (aka one team being overpowered), unbalanced teams (all good players stacked in one team) or map imbalances.
Something more intresting could be votes on the com's performance after a match. For example, people could simply vote whether they liked the com or not (or think his performance was OK, but neither good or bad). In order to adjust the system only the most recent votes should be taken into considerating at the start of a new maps. A com might have been bad 1 month ago, but in the meantime he learned a lot of things and has become a very decent com, but he still has the bad votes from the beginning. So after some time, these old votes would just disppear to display the commanding performance properly.
Besides that a complete record could be done (steam commuty page maybe?).
A more restrictive solution to the problem is to do it similarily, but simply restict the ability to become com to a player who has been playing the game for something like 50 hours already. Eventually that limit could be invidually set by servers, so we can have newbie learning srevers and pro-only servers.
(Personally I think the first option seems a good solution in general :P)
Is it acceptable to have a newbie com runing the game for the entire team and eventually the opposing one as well? But if we don't allow newbies to learn, we'll never have enough commanders and deny them the commanding experience. So what is the right choice of action?
I think this is a really though problem. Firstly, that newbie might be at least willing to learn, so he actually does decently enough, so if you don't let him, we would loose a potential decent commander in the future. But then we also have the other kind of newbies, that is stubborn and doesn't want to listen or simply can't (because they might not speak English at all) which can lead to a terrible game
There is also the problem of different learning paces, some people may pick things up very quickly, some other may be rather slow.
A less restrictive option is to have the com voting system in place and simply display how long the specific player has been commanding for. A commander with 10 hours experience as marine is more lilkly to be successful compared to a com with just 2 hours com experience. Nobody would be forced to vote for the more experienced com, if people are willing to give the newer com a chance, they sill can.
Also quantity doesn't mean quality, so recording win/loss might be a good idea (in theory), but that is biased against current build imbalances (aka one team being overpowered), unbalanced teams (all good players stacked in one team) or map imbalances.
Something more intresting could be votes on the com's performance after a match. For example, people could simply vote whether they liked the com or not (or think his performance was OK, but neither good or bad). In order to adjust the system only the most recent votes should be taken into considerating at the start of a new maps. A com might have been bad 1 month ago, but in the meantime he learned a lot of things and has become a very decent com, but he still has the bad votes from the beginning. So after some time, these old votes would just disppear to display the commanding performance properly.
Besides that a complete record could be done (steam commuty page maybe?).
A more restrictive solution to the problem is to do it similarily, but simply restict the ability to become com to a player who has been playing the game for something like 50 hours already. Eventually that limit could be invidually set by servers, so we can have newbie learning srevers and pro-only servers.
(Personally I think the first option seems a good solution in general :P)
Comments
I have more issues seeing ppl bag the commander instead of helping them out and giving advice
that I do with bad comms trying to learn.
re: ejecting bad comms... theres already a way to do that in game
Any player should still be able to use the command chair, even if they have not completed the tutorial. However if a player who <i>has</i> completed the tutorial wants to take over they can just walk up and eject the untrained commander instantly. A trained commander would still be required to be voted off course.
As for strategies etc. there's no way to learn that other than just playing. Prioritizing players who has more played more hours etc. would just make it horribly frustrating for new players that want to command.
<b>Mandatory Commanding Tutorial, booyah!</b>
Ok, this were 4... But the last one isn't really a...
Ah, never mind. I will just explain it.
Before the game is released, there has to be a tutorial covering the basics of commanding. Before you can jump into a CC on a multiplayer server, you have to complete the tutorial. This way a noob com isn't completely clueless. Ok, they will still lose their first game. But this happens and you can't do anything about it. It's the same with unbalanced teams (aka marine noob squad). But it will lessen the amount of loses because of noob coms. And after release we WILL see this many times, if there is no tutorial.
The other very important (and easy to implement) change we need is:
<b>Make the game playable without the need of players on the other team. And reset as soon as the first player joins the other team.</b>
If I had the possibility to use the com station on an empty server and place buildings, I could have learned much before I played my first commander on a full server. So why am I not allowed to play with myself? (I dare you, to see a pun in there!)
Any player should still be able to use the command chair, even if they have not completed the tutorial. However if a player who <i>has</i> completed the tutorial wants to take over they can just walk up and eject the untrained commander instantly. A trained commander would still be required to be voted off course.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I like the first part of your post, have a simple tutorial where players can see how the commander mode works and be able to start with the basics right away(like drop a armory and rts). If they can manage that it is unlikly they will be ejected.
About the 2nd part, the eject system should be equal to everyone, doesnt matter if he a beginner or veteran. It will probably be server dependant if you get ejected or not.
Instead of screaming over the mic "Get out of the chair you useless noob" and "Oh we are going to lose because of your noob ass" give him tips. If you see something that should be done, tell it to the commander. Guide him in what to build and what to upgrade. Tell him the advantages of each building etc.
This method knocks out 2 birds with 1 stone.
-The noob actually learns how to command from the help of his troops making that noob commander noob no longer
-The game may actually be won because everyone helped the commander instead of screaming insults at him (I've won a game with a noob commander by helping guide hiim)
But of course, This only works if the noob commander is willing to listen. If he isnt willing to listen, then he truely is a noob deserving of an eject.
My thinking was more that players that have not bothered taking the short time to go through the tutorial would be a "temporary" commander at best. Just something to keep the game going until a more capable person comes along. There has to be some leeway in the system as well of course, the people who's done the training might not want to command at that time or feel that the "untrained" commander is doing a sufficient job and just leave him to it.
I didn't mean that there would be any benefit given to veterans though. Simply that people who's done the basic tutorial should be prioritized over those who hasn't.
10-20 minutes of tutorials is not much of a price to pay to make sure you don't get thrown out of the chair imo. If it happened there had to be some kind of message saying why of course: "<i>You've been ejected by trained Commander XXXX, to avoid this in the future please complete the com training found on the main menu.</i>" or something like that.
A comm tutorial is a good idea, but I am fairly sure it would have to be community made, rather than something extra made by UWE.
But when the game gets released, there should definitely be a tutorial for skulk/marine khamm/comm. I don't know what UWEs resources are for such, but even a well made video might do the trick, it's not rocket science after all, everyone has played an RTS.
1. Play game as regular player for a few hours.
2. At some point, jump in the chair at the beginning of the match.
3. Play as commander until eventually ejected.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 as many times as necessary until you stop having fun.
I don't think it's hard to learn commander, I think people just seem to have such thin skin. Play as commander and suck at it a few times. Zomg you'll get a D+ in a video game. Who cares.
1. Have a short, interactive comm tutorial that introduces you to the basics of the interface, main gameplay elements, and description of structures/chambers
2. Host a series of 1v1 comm-only servers where you play against a human opponent with bots as players, SC2 1v1-style to learn basic tactics and strategy
3. Have a pre-round comm vote system where the potential comms have to opt-in and their total hours of playing comm are displayed next to their names
Quite simply, NS2 is first and foremost a FPS as the majority of the players (30 out of 32) will experience the game as such. Unfortunately, a new or bad comm can seriously degrade the fun and experience of the FPS portion. While some of this can be fixed by the community helping/turning a blind eye to new comms, relying solely on this is a recipe for disaster. Not every potential NS2 player will be forgiving as many of the beta community members and the game will devolve into a series of rage against/verbal abuse/ejection of new comms if this isn't addressed sufficiently.
as for tracking stats of commanders, there are some major issues with this:
<b>more stress</b>
-commanding is already a stressful experience. it is unique and fun to command players, but i figure many people are afraid of the negative feedback they get when making a mistake (they even get it when doing everything right, it's just so easy to blame a com...). not everyone will listen to your orders/waypoints and you have to be prepared for massive complaints or even flaming if you try out unconventional tactics.
introducing stats adds even more stress to this experience as it makes everything much more serious. it is nice to have a challenging game in which you can improve your skills without a limit, but it gets quite frustrating as soon as it feels like having an exam...
<b>probably less commanders</b>
-if you introduce stats, some people will think twice about when to start commanding or even if the circumstances are good enough (skilled people on the team, no disadvantage in numbers, favorite starting position, personal mental state, etc.). in the end, there might be only a small group of elite, hardcore commanders making it even harder to get into commanding. there are already several games where nobody dares to go commanding!
then again, i get your point (and actually share it) that it is nice to actually achieve something for your efforts and wins.
finding a nice stat for this is very difficult though. total amount of hours in command sounds okay although people might end up having high expectations, which can be a problem if you resume playing after taking a longer break from the game.
you will have something similar if you only display total amounts of wins (without displaying the losses) but this will also give you the feeling of actually achieving something when winning a match. this brings up another issue though: fast wins will count the same as slow wins.
<b>in my oppinion, using 4 persistant scores is the best solution: marine, marine commander, kharaa, kharaa commander.</b>
one could use the ingame score or just the length of the game, multiplying it (e.g. with 3) if the match is won. you can also add a multiplier or a flat bonus for finishing a game.
many, many more details can go into the formula. for example you could give a 1/4 of the gained score for one race to the other score for the other race because playing as a marine will also benefit your knowledge about the kharaa...
<b>advantages:</b>
-people will roughly know how much experience you have as commander but also on the field (as it also contributes to commanding)
-you will not end up with a huge kharaa score if you only play marine all the time
-no persistant punishment you might regret later
-more motivation to win (for both commanders and players) as you get more points
-less disappointment if you lose as you still get some points
-more motivation to fight it out until the bitter end (for both commanders and players, assuming you get some sort of bonus for finishing the match)
this. make it so that nobody can join a team from RR until two commanders are voted upon!
it would solve so much. can anyone mod this in quickly for a test? i can help with visuals
I see something like:
*Comm login
"Build an Armory for your marines to get equipment."
"Build an IP to help your marines spawn faster."
*Build Armory and IP
"You could help your marines with Shotguns. Click on Armory and research Shotguns."
Just make those appear while in-game. If the Marines have only 1 RT, suggest to build another. If Marines have all the basic Armory weapons(Mines, Welder, Shotguns), suggest to upgrade the Armory to research Grenade and Flames. Depending on the buildings on the map and the upgrades, suggest an objective for the comm. If marines ask for Medpacks or Ammo, just pop-up a label explaining how to give it to them.
That way, you encourage the comm to take decisions and build stuff, and he'll see directly the effects of his decisions. And it's not so bad for the marines, because anyway, what we want is jetpacks with flames or nades, and almost all the building decisions the comm makes will lead to that.
It works for the FPS part (yeah, I learned a couple of things reading those while playing), I don't see why it shouldn't work the comm part. After that, it's just a matter of skills and decision-making.
Oh, and please, no forced tutorial or videos. Those ARE frustrating. Just give a sandbox mode where people can try whatever. They'll learn, they're not stupid.
*Comm login
"Build an Armory for your marines to get equipment."
"Build an IP to help your marines spawn faster."
*Build Armory and IP
"You could help your marines with Shotguns. Click on Armory and research Shotguns."
Oh, and please, no forced tutorial or videos. Those ARE frustrating. Just give a sandbox mode where people can try whatever. They'll learn, they're not stupid.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
They could just have a 'tool-guide' window on the side that helps you out in a similar fashion, with a checkbox that would disable the window from continuing when a commander thinks he/she knows enough, etc.
I'm not an amazing commander, but I don't think I've ever been voted to be kicked out (nor have I attempted to kick someone out,) does it tell the commander when a vote starts?